Inside Occupy Wall Street's 'People's Library': Chomsky, Zinn, Klein

A demonstrator browses books at the library of the Occupy Wall Street protesters' camp at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan in New York.

Mike Segar / Reuters

Another blue-skied weekend at Occupy Wall Street saw the usual congeries of activists, drummers, pontificators and sympathizers converge on Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park.

Folk musicians strummed guitars next to environmental campaigners agitating against the practice of fracking. By the northern face of the park, a man visiting from Florida angrily denounced the bailout of banks before a broadcast streamed across the Internet. Viewers watching online texted back their support in an open chat window.

Not far from this real-time vox pop, three volunteers sat sorting a pile of books. One raised a copy of an Estonian dictionary. “Is this for reference or foreign languages?” she asked. “Foreign, I think,” came the considered answer.

Occupy Wall Street's “People's Library” is, like much else at the movement's adopted home, somewhat surprising. Taking up a good chunk of the northeastern corner of the park, it consists of a maze of tables and hard plastic boxes marked by genre — fiction, classics, sci-fi, children's, and so on. The movement's designated librarians say there's somewhere between 2,500 to 4,000 volumes in the park, with more in storage and dozens of new books donated by visitors and supporters every day. “As the occupation and movement has grown,” says Zachary Loeb, an actual librarian in the New York City area who volunteers at the site, “so too has its library.”

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The ten or so volunteers who man the library at any given moment record the ISBN number of each book and tag the books' bindings with pink stickers marked “OWSL” — making the collection, despite its unorthodox home, look like something not out of place in any public library. But there is no formal method for borrowing from the People's Library. It exists on an unwritten honor code among denizens of Occupy Wall Street.

While I was speaking with Loeb, a visitor asked him whether there was any system to returning books. “None,” Loeb replies. “You'll just have my eternal gratitude.” Hristo Voynov, a student at Hunter College and another volunteer at the library, claims that simple trust works at Occupy Wall Street. “Every night, the library ends up with more books than it started with.”

One may wonder why Occupy Wall Street needs to invest time and energy into maintaining a library, not least as New York's bitter, oft-snowy winter approaches. Loeb turns the question around: “Why is it important to have a kitchen, a [tents and blanket] station, a press table and not a library? Information matters. We are feeding people's minds.”

The most popular books on offer do seem to be what one would expect: leftist tracts on history and politics by authors like Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, or Naomi Klein. These populate a set of shelves in the People's Library of books that cannot be borrowed because they're so popular and in demand. Yet also in the most popular mix are satirical commentaries from The Onion, a binder of ponderous articles explaining the financial crisis and myriad anthologies of poetry, including one of poetry written explicitly by participants of Occupy Wall Street or in honor of the protesters. That collection even boasts works submitted by famous American poets such as Adrienne Rich and Anne Walmdan.

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In the Sunday afternoon sunshine, one adolescent boy sits amid the crowd in yellow socks and soccer cleats, reading a comic book entitled “Addicted to War,” about the militarization of American society. Myriad New Yorkers and protesters file through the library's aisles, perusing and sitting down on nearby park benches with copies. Amanda Hartkey, another library volunteer, says that the library is emblematic of the wider spirit in the park. “I'm inspired by how so many different people come here and treat each other with respect. No one interrupts the other and now they read together.” Through wireless headphones passed around to those in the park, the library has recently started its own public readings series. It's Zuccotti Park's local radio station.

But, away from the almost quaint pleasantness of the library, all's not rosy for Occupy Wall Street. Winter is coming and the scramble is on to amass enough warm sleeping bags and clothing so that the occupiers could withstand below freezing temperatures. Organizers claim they'll be prepared, but also acknowledge that the park's overnight numbers may slip dramatically as activists opt for warmer, indoor spaces. Meanwhile, some among the group are pushing for the movement to consider Occupying Central Park, a move that could more easily incite police intervention and which is opposed by a good number of the organizers at Zuccotti Park.

Moreover, concerns are growing about local community complaints over the disturbances caused by protesters — including incidents of public urination and the incessant noise of the park's drum circle. Organizers claim to have reined in the hours during which the drummers bang away and some grumble about wanting to sabotage the musicians' equipment. Occupy Wall Street has the money to rent Port-a-Potties, but protesters say New York City authorities have so far denied them the right to set those up. “We are doing everything in our power to abide by the laws and respect our neighbors,” says Sherman Jackson, an Occupy Wall Street media representative, who adds that many on the neighborhood community board support their presence. Still, the threat of eviction is a perennial, invisible presence in the park.

Back at the library, there are more immediate problems. Voynov, one of the volunteers, struggles to preserve the integrity of the sci-fi/fantasy shelf. “People just put back books anywhere,” he says. But he admits it's impressive that books once borrowed come back at all. Of course, not all are returned. The People's Library had on reserve two copies of Steal This Book, by 1960s activist rabble-rouser Abbie Hoffman. Both volumes have been stolen.

LIST: Occupy Wall Street Protester in 2011's Topical Halloween Costumes

Ishaan Tharoor is a writer for TIME and editor of Global Spin. You can find him on Twitter at @ishaantharoor. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEWorld.

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